In the prior art great pain and stress has been experienced by weakened patients as catheter anchoring tape is removed from the skin.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide an anchor base, preferably made of flexible plastic which can be wrapped around the wrist or all taping can be done on the top of the anchor base and the anchor base itself acts as a substitute for the patient's skin, whereby the patient's skin is not painfully distressed as it would be in the prior art method when the tape is removed.
In the new way hereof, the removing of tape is from the anchor base itself. In this way the anchor base acts as a "substitute skin."
In the prior art catheter stabilizers have been proposed in which the intention is to anchor the stabilizer without any bands extending around the wrist. Such a way is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,250,880, issued Feb. 17, 1981, to Marvin Gordon, entitled STABILIZING FITTING FOR AN INTRAVENOUS CATHETER.
It is an object of this invention to provide an anchoring system in which the amount of adhesive contact with the skin is much lesser for the reason that the adhesive material under the base of the anchor can be a very small area since it does not need to assist adhesive tape in holding the catheter in place. Having the adhesive material which is secured to the base of very small size reduces the discomfort when the base is removed from the patient's skin, whereby not as many skin areas are pulled loose painfully. Likewise the absence of adhesive tape in contact with the skin to hold the base reduces the pain that would result from the removal of the tape.
In addition, the firmness of anchoring is believed to be more secure when bands go completely around the arm.
Another objective is to provide an anchor which has a minimal die cost for low cost manufacturing.
A U.S. Pat. No. 4,316,461, issued Feb. 23, 1982 to Henri J. Marais and titled INTRAVENOUS VASCULAR STABILIZER shows two bands attached to a base. The adhesive area under the base covers the entirety of a large base which would make painful removal from a patient's arm when adhesive coating must be pulled away from the skin hair, etc. This painful removal would be especially large because of the great area of the adhesive coating.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a base making use of my discovery that a very small adhesive coating is all that is needed for temporary positioning where bands are being tightened.
Bands that have stages in their final positions because of the use of spaced apertures to receive protruding buttons do not provide for the tightening of bands to positions between the apertures, whereby the choice is for the band to be somewhat more loose than ideal, or somewhat more tight than ideal. It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a method of holding the bands in place which allows for their positioning at any degree of tightness, rather than only at a selected spaced stage of tightening.
Speed of application can be very important in emergency times. It has been discovered that the use of very small adhesive areas at one end of each of two bands is of great assistance in holding both ends in place when the other ends of the same bands are brought around to positions for connection thereto.
The use of small adhesive portions at the ends of bands and at the same time using a small adhesive portion under the base makes a combination of advantage because then none of these adhesive portions need be of any considerable size, whereby pain is reduced during removal. Portions under the bands enhance stability and cooperation with the portion under the base so that it all can be of small area to the comfort of the patient.
An important objective is to provide skin-anchor adhesive for attaching the underside of the base to a limb to hold the base in place while its bands are being secured in place.